Nokia, SAS, Orbitz Score High in Work-Life Balance

Nokia, SAS, Orbitz Score High in Work-Life Balance

by Nathan Eddy

SAS Tops the Third Annual List

SAS, home to business offerings that enable large-scale software solutions for areas such as IT management, business intelligence and customer relationship management, topped the list with a work-life balance score of 4.5.

National Instruments Lands in Second Place

Headquartered in Austin, Texas, National Instruments is a producer of automated test equipment and virtual instrumentation software. It nabbed a score of 4.3.

Slalom Glides to a Third Place Finish

Slalom Consulting, a business and technology consulting firm that delivers solutions through a national network of local offices across North America, scored a 4.1 on the work-life balance scale this year.

Mitre Is Highest-Ranking Nonprofit on the List

A private, not-for-profit organization, Mitre manages federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs), and scored a 4.1 in the survey.

Orbitz Flies to New Heights to Round Out Top Five

Online travel behemoth Orbitz rounded out the top five best companies for work-life balance (4.1), with one employee lauding the flexible working hours.

Nokia Lands in Tenth Place

Once the world's largest handset manufacturer, Nokia also scored a 4.1, as one employee noted the company's focus on making sure employees get vacation time and time to recharge.

Autodesk Has a Good Design for Employee Needs

Design software specialist Autodesk scored an even 4.0, which landed the company in 12th place. "They are constantly acquiring great and exciting companies," an Autodesk employee said.

Citrix Employees Cite Relaxed Environment, Plentiful Parking

Citrix provides server and desktop virtualization, networking, software-as-a-service (SaaS) and cloud computing technologies. It scored a 4.0landing it in 14th place right behind AOL.

Yahoo Has Found Employee Benefits That Impress

The search engine specialist has had its ups and downs over the years, but employees still seem to like working there. The company scored a 4.0 and landed in 16th place.

NetApp Manages to Make the Cut for the Top 25

NetApp squeezed into the top 25 with a score of 3.9, with employees citing flexibility, supportive management and travel opportunities.

With the unemployment rate in the United States still worryingly high, many would be happy just to have a steady job. Even better, of course, would be being employed by a company that you actually enjoy working for. To that end, Glassdoor is bringing to light the best places to work—and tech companies dominate that list. Glassdoor's third annual list of Top 25 Companies for Work-Life Balance relies solely on the input of employees who elected to participate in an online anonymous company review survey. The survey gathers employee opinion on some of the best reasons to work for their employer (pros) and some of the downsides (cons). In addition, employees are asked to rate how satisfied they are with their company overall and how well they feel their CEO is leading the company, as well as key workplace attributes like career opportunities, compensation and benefits, culture and values, senior management and work-life balance. For this list, companies had to have at least 50 approved work-life balance ratings in the past year to be considered. Work-Life Balance ratings are based on a 5-point scale: 1.0 representing very dissatisfied, 3.0 representing OK and 5.0 representing very satisfied. Here are some of the top tech companies that made this year's list.